Hladky, Hryts

Hladky, Hryts [Гладкий, Гриць; Hladkyj, Hryc'], b 19 January 1893 in Chernykhivtsi, Zbarazh county, Galicia, d 14 September 1936 in Lviv. Political leader and journalist. He participated in Ukraine’s struggle for independence (1917–20) as a captain of the Army of the Ukrainian National Republic and chief of the chancellery of the Sich Riflemen Corps. After the First World War he was active in politics as organizer for the Ukrainian Radical party in the Lviv region. In 1922 he moved to Lutsk where he helped found the Ukrainian Bank, edited a local paper, Ukraïns'ke zhyttia, and assisted Mykhailo Cherkavsky in publishing Ukraïns’ka hromada (Lutsk). Rejecting his party’s election strategy, he joined the Ukrainian National Democratic Alliance (UNDO) in 1928 and returned to Lviv where he became editor of UNDO’s newspaper Svoboda (Lviv), chief of its national office, and chairman of the party’s Lviv regional organization. Hladky committed suicide.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 2 (1988).]